Ivan Vladislavic - 101 Detectives

He wasn’t putting himself out there: that’s why the jobs were so scarce. He needed a new business card. Joseph Blumenfeld: Bespoke Detective. Esquire? Nope, old hat. Your Boutique Agency for pop-up surveillance. For made-to-measure security solutions. For artisanal what?

Mugshots. Merch. Face on an eggwhisk, name on a golf umbrella. If your product won’t move you may as well take your name off the door. Lie down on the carpet with a stick of chalk in your hand.

Then he thought about Valerie and the Littles. Davy, Sookie, Okefenokee and Lilo. What would become of them if he checked out? That greedy bastard Chief Detective Inspector Detective Chief Chief Culp had looted the Detectives’ Provident Fund.

Hand in glove with the 101 set. He pictured them primping themselves for the Meet and Greet. Combing their hairpieces, holstering their deep-sea pencils, huffing on their smartphones and polishing them on the linings of their what?

He pictured them leaving their rooms. And just then the doors went doef doef doef like distant gunshots, the flat bark and so on. They thought they would see him in the Assembly Room. Think again.

Doef . That was Vermeulen. She would close one dyed-blonde hair in the crack of the door. Monitoring the perimeter. Smart cookie. He saw her adjusting her fringe, now one hair short, in the lift mirror.

Doef. Chief Inspector Connell of the Gorbals. Hanging the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the handle of his door, flipping the one on his neighbour’s so it read ‘Make up the room’. Highland humour.

Connell would take the stairs, working on that paunch of his as usual. It’s not the soft underbelly of crime that gets you, Savolainen always said, it’s the hard overbelly of the law.

That crazy Finn! With his goofy bow ties and his bungee-jumping. Poking Connell with a long forefinger. He heard footsteps in the corridor, drawing closer, pausing, fading away. And it scared him.

Doef. The sultry Scarlozzi. She would make an entrance through the kitchen. It was one of the great escape routes, almost as good as the air-conditioning duct. Whether coming or going.

Going! I should get out now while there’s still time, he thought. He hauled up the blinds and put his mouth close to the cold glass. Still breathing. That’s something.

He paced out the distance from window to door. He looked at the blackboard square of night in the window frame and the chalky formulae of stars and neon.

Should I throw a chair through it? He saw himself for a split second in the shards, almost connected, before he fell away in pieces. Ice on asphalt.

Never mind the window, he should go through the door. There was nothing to stop him, except his own failings as a Detective, his foibles and frailties.

He remembered the invitation folded seven times in a fortune cookie. 101 Detectives: Sub-Saharan Africa. Be there! Bang. He remembered the names of the Organising Committee.

There’s a pattern I’m missing, he thought. A pattern I’m missing. Or is there a pattern I’m missing? And then it struck him. A pattern.

I know none of them. Where is Wouter ‘Nougat’ Niedermayr? Where is Scarlozzi, L, MD? The pointless rigmarole of introduction. It doesn’t add up.

He took the leaflet from the dresser. How toxic are you? He looked at the numbers scrawled across it in Blumenfeld’s symptomatic hand.

He remembered riding the bus in from the airport alone. He remembered checking in alone. Is there a Detective in the house?

He dialled reception. While the phone rang he folded the leaflet in half precisely and ran his nails along the crease.

Let’s say the whole thing is a set-up, he thought, an elaborate sting to do away with me. Sting-aling-aling, pal!

He folded the top corners down to the crease and pressed them flat. Half a question: anxious without cause?

No, anxious with cause. Plenty. I should get out while there’s still time. Before they come for me.

Half of another problem: fatigued for no apparent reason? Less fatigued than depleted. He dropped the phone.

He looked again at the door. But still he did not move. He was thinking. Folding.

Is resolve a failing or a flaw? If I leave, who will finish the paperwork?

Who will wrap things up? He froze for a moment, for old times’ sake.

He unfolded the wings precisely. There was still time to find the what?

He launched the pig towards the window. It flew into white space.

Make the right gesture. Try. That’s what it bubbles down to.

I am accustomed to waiting. It comes with the territory.

He pictured a wee paper sandwich board: Joe Blumenfeld.

1 (one) Detective: Sub-Saharan Africa. Herringbones (Pty) Ltd.

It brought a lump to his eye.

And a tear to his throat.

A what in the snuffbox?

Make up the room.

He felt small.

And then.

But.

The corporate storyteller is having a bad day. She’s spent the morning in her office on the 11th floor peering at the monitor, occasionally typing a line and deleting it, or standing at the window, back turned on the recitation pod, looking down into the square. She doesn’t like the view and so the force with which it draws her to the window is all the more irritating. The square is a paved rectangle, to be precise, enclosed in a shopping mall and surrounded by restaurant terraces. She sees an arrangement of rooftops suggesting office parks, housing complexes and parking garages, and streets nearly devoid of life. No one walks around here if they can help it.

While she’s been musing, the monitor has gone to sleep. In its inky depths she sees the outline of her head, a darker blot with a spiky crown. Her fingers creep over the keyboard like withered tendrils. Not yet thirty, she thinks grimly, and already as gnarled as an old vine. She badly needs a story for the quarterly meeting of the board, a parable to open proceedings and set the tone. Just a week after that it’s the annual Green Day, which demands fresh and leafy input. Which aquifer will she draw it from?

She scoots her chair aside to face the white slab of the desktop. This paperless expanse, a mockery of a blank page, usually makes her long for clutter, for a glass paperweight with a daisy inside it and a tangle of paper clips, but today it’s as refreshing to her eye as a block of ice. She rests her forearms on the desk, palms flat and fingers splayed, and then she sinks down in submission until her forehead touches the cool veneer.

Up and down . Might these be the poles of her narrative system, as they are of the corporate structure? The analysts say that verticality is over and done with, and today’s corporations are horizontal, self-organising and contingent, but she sees no evidence of this. She has to get the basics right. Complications will follow, but they’ll be manageable if they rest on a foundation that’s firm and true. Yesterday she was reflecting on in and out , the day before on big and small , but today it’s up and down .

The terms must appeal because of her circumstances, and her history and psychology must play their part. She wants to rise, not necessarily all the way to the top but closer, and here she is, with ten storeys below her and another ten above. Middling is a purgatory. Better right at the bottom than here. Hence the fascination of the basement.

A face surfaces in the milk of her memory just as her own surfaced in the ink of the screen. There’s a story somewhere. Who’s that again? A friend of a friend. Yes, it comes back to her. Dumisane. He developed an unusual phobia: he thought something was going to fall on him. Something would drop out of the sky, when he least expected it, and put a farcical end to his life. Where did this fear originate? Perhaps a pigeon shat on him in the playground on some long-forgotten schoolday. Nearly every fear and foible can be traced to the merciless battlefields of first and second break. It’s made his life unbearable. In his apartment, with a blank ceiling overhead, his anxiety subsides, although ceilings and apartment blocks have also been known to collapse. Going out is an ordeal. He cannot take a step without looking up. He wants to see his ignominious fate approaching, even if he’s unable to avoid it. And so he does get hurt, because he’s always banging into things, and the bruises and skinned shins these accidents leave behind confirm that the universe means to do him harm. It’s just a matter of time before he steps in front of a car.